Cambridge Analytica/Social Media

[TGHusker]

Regarding super pacs - good reason to get money out of our elections - overturn Citizens United.

 

https://www.channel4.com/news/exposed-undercover-secrets-of-donald-trump-data-firm-cambridge-analytica

 

Quote

 

Cambridge Analytica’s chief data scientist Dr Tayler said: “As part of it, sometimes you have to separate it from the political campaign itself. So in America you know there  are independent expenditure groups running behind the campaign… Super pacs. Political action committees.

“So, campaigns are normally subject to limits about how much money they can raise.  Whereas outside groups can raise an unlimited amount. So the campaign will use their finite resources for things like persuasion and mobilisation and then they leave the ‘air war’ they call it, like the negative attack ads to other affiliated groups.”

In a different meeting, Mr Turnbull described how the company created the “Defeat Crooked Hilary” brand of attack ads, that were funded by the Make America Number 1 super-PAC and watched more than 30 million times during the campaign.

Coordination between an official election campaign and any outside groups is illegal under US election law. Cambridge Analytica deny wrongdoing, insisting a strict firewall separated out their activity and that they were transparent about their work on political campaigns and PACs.

‘No paper trail’

In one exchange Alexander Nix revealed the company used a secret self-destructing email system that leaves no trace. He said: “No-one knows we have it, and secondly we set our… emails with a self-destruct timer… So you send them and after they’ve been read, two hours later, they disappear. There’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing.”

Mr Nix also belittled representatives on the House Intelligence Committee to whom he gave evidence in 2017. He claims Republican members asked just three questions. “After five minutes – done.”

“They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works,” he said.

Mr Nix further claimed that Democrats on the Committee are motivated by “sour grapes”.

He said: “They don’t understand because the candidate never, is never involved. He’s told what to do by the campaign team.”

“So the candidate is the puppet?,” the undercover reporter asked.

“Always,” replied Mr Nix.

He added that his firm could avoid any US investigation into its foreign clients. “I’m absolutely convinced that they have no jurisdiction…,” he said. “We’ll say none of your business.”

The meetings involved Mr Nix, along with Mark Turnbull, Managing Director Political Global, and Dr Alex Tayler, the company’s chief data scientist.

 

 

Quote

 

Tonight, a Cambridge Analytica spokesman said: “CA has never claimed it won the election for President Trump. This is patently absurd. We are proud of the work we did on that campaign, and have spoken in many public forums about what we consider to be our contribution to the campaign.”

On campaign finance violations, the firm said: “Cambridge Analytica has been completely transparent about our simultaneous work on both political campaigns and political action committees (including publicly declaring our work on both with FEC filings). We have strict firewall practises to ensure no coordination between regulated groups, including the teams working on non-coordinated campaigns being physically separated, using different servers and being banned from communicating with each other.”

On Russia investigation: “As one of the companies that played a prominent role in the 2016 election campaign, Cambridge Analytica is committed to supporting and assisting the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian interference in the election in any way that we can. CA is not under investigation, and there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the company. They deny any involvement in the alleged Russian attempts and say such an allegation is entirely false.”

 

 

[Moiraine]

Quote

 

“They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works,” he said.

 

 

 

^ the problem with having a lot of lawyers in charge. We should be governed by a diverse group of people with different ares of expertise.

 

It sucks that humans are conditioned to value people based on a combination of how good they are at public speaking and how attractive they are. Ideally there should be a small handful of lawyers who understand the constitution and law-writing. The rest should be different kinds of scientists and economists and successful business runners, etc. Right now 39% of the House and 53% of the Senate are lawyers.

 

It also makes me think of some of the things the supreme court justices have said when presented with mathematical/statistical ideas on fixing gerrymandering. They don't get it. They're also at the top of their field which makes them think they're smarter than everyone else, even when it comes to subjects they don't understand.

 

We see this with politicians and climate change. We have some who are paid by companies to lie, we have others who are ignorant and don't get it, and we have some who are a combination of the 2.

 

Went off topic there.

 

Anyway, related to what TGH said, it's just another reason. We already heard about the NRA donating $ they may have gotten or did get from a Russian. That isn't right.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Moiraine

[TGHusker]

Off topic but another thing to pile on Trump today  - just showing more evidence of his ineptness for the office.

https://www.thewrap.com/former-playboy-model-karen-mcdougal-sues-break-silence-relationship-trump/

Quote

 

Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Donald Trump, is taking a page straight out of the Stormy Daniels playbook.

According to a The New York Times report, McDougal filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to get out of her 2016 non-disclosure agreement, becoming the second woman in two weeks to file a lawsuit accusing the president or his allies of trying to bury news about a Trump extramarital affair.

McDougal is suing American Media Inc., The National Enquirer’s parent company, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, paid her $150,000 to buy her story — but never ran it. The Enquirer’s chief executive, David Pecker, is a friend of Trump’s.

 

 

[RedDenver]

Legal angle from lawfare:

The Cambridge Analytica-Facebook Debacle: A Legal Primer

[GSG]

 

 

 

 

[ZRod]

On 3/20/2018 at 4:52 PM, TGHusker said:

the CEO of Cambridge has been suspended

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/cambridge-analytica-s-board-suspends-ceo-nix-pending-inquiry

 

 

 

Now that I know how to embed tweets, and just so we are clear here...

 

 

I don't know much background on this journalist, but if you do the Twitter thing, she seems like an excellent follow for the latest updates about CA and any US/UK implications.

[Danny Bateman]

This is... interesting.

 

It doesn't really appear the Mercers and their dark money are dissuaded but rather emboldened by the fallout from all of this.

 

 

[Moiraine]

One of another thousands of reasons we need an informed electorate - so this kind of thing doesn't work on people.

 

I wish people had to pass the citizenship exam in order to get registered to vote.

Also, it's hard to impossible to have an informed electorate when news channels/sites are legally allowed to blatantly lie.

[Guy Chamberlin]

I've always assumed my every move on Facebook and Google was being captured, analyzed, and sold. Most often to the people who turn my proven preferences into the pop-up ads that magically appear wherever I go on the internet. And I know there are tons of other players in data mining without the big brand names. There are doing what marketers have always done, just far more efficiently. I never considered the Internet to be something private. Just the opposite. 

 

There's a lot to be outraged about these days, but Cambridge Analytica isn't shocking in itself: anyone who can afford it -- corporation or political party -- will be doing big data analytics.

 

Also gotta gauge the outrage over a foreign state attempting to influence another country's election. If you want to open the books on America's history of dabbling, undermining, funding, character assassinations, and old-fashioned gun-to-the-head assassinations, it's very long and not very pretty. 

[Moiraine]

^ I don't like it when people argue the last paragraph. I don't consider myself very patriotic compared to my peers. I just got lucky with where I was born. America is great and I want it to stay that way but I had nothing to do with it. If there's a scale for how patriotic Americans are about America, I'm probably a 3 or 4. Seeing as Americans are super duper patriotic, a 3 is still pretty patriotic.

 

Now to the point, America's meddling in other countries' elections/governments is basically off topic as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure some of that meddling had bad consequences for us. Some probably had good consequences for the country we meddled with and for us. Some had good consequences for only us. None of that is relevant to me in this conversation.

 

If anyone tries to meddle with our s#!t, we fight tooth and nail to stop it. I don't care if we kidnapped that country's first born children 50 years ago. We stop them.

 

So I hate that argument every time I hear it. I don't care if we did it to every country on earth. We don't let it happen to us.

Edited March 24, 2018 by Moiraine

[funhusker]

40 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

^ I don't like it when people argue the last paragraph. I don't consider myself very patriotic compared to my peers. I just got lucky with where I was born. America is great and I want it to stay that way but I had nothing to do with it. If there's a scale for how patriotic Americans are about America, I'm probably a 3 or 4. Seeing as Americans are super duper patriotic, a 3 is still pretty patriotic.

 

Now to the point, America's meddling in other countries' elections/governments is basically off topic as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure some of that meddling had bad consequences for us. Some probably had good consequences for the country we meddled with and for us. Some had good consequences for only us. None of that is relevant to me in this conversation.

 

If anyone tries to meddle with our s#!t, we fight tooth and nail to stop it. I don't care if we kidnapped that country's first born children 50 years ago. We stop them.

 

So I hate that argument every time I hear it. I don't care if we did it to every country on earth. We don't let it happen to us.

It drives me bonkers!  We are all Husker fans here, presumably.  And most of us complain when our defense doesn't do a good job of stopping the other team.  Well...we tried to score on them too, so maybe we shouldn't get so upset when they score just as much, if not more, on us?  

 

If I lived anywhere else, I might laugh at the current goings on in America, but I don't.  America is my team and I don't want to lose.  But I also don't believe that means other countries have to feel like they lost.....does that make sense?

 

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Credibility still matters. Where you draw the line in electoral meddling (and data mining) is pretty relevant to the conversation. 

 

It's not like this kind of meddling is in the distant past. And I think we can have the two conversations at once. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[funhusker]

2 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

Credibility still matters. Where you draw the line in electoral meddling (and data mining) is pretty relevant to the conversation. 

 

It's not like this kind of meddling is in the distant past. And I think we can have the two conversations at once. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree.  I know it sounds like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, but really I'm not.  I'm okay with the United States meddling in elections because I believe (I know it is naive in many cases) that we are doing it for the better: democracy, freedom, equal rights, etc....I'm not okay with other nations doing it to us because the motive I see is disruption, chaos, distrust, etc....

 

I understand why other nations would want to meddle, and I don't think it is unwarranted.  But I'm not okay with it.

 

Poor analogy:  I'm an organized crime kingpin.  I make a really good living running books, money laundering, and all kinds of illegal things.  I understand that the FBI has every right to bust up my ring, but I'm not going to be excited about it.  In fact I might do whatever I can to disrupt the investigation and make the FBI seem like the bad guys....

[Guy Chamberlin]

I think our reasons for influencing elections are pretty obvious and in most cases logical: we want a government that is willing to align with U.S. political and economic interests. Someone we can work with and count on, and will possibly let us use their air space. 

 

That's all pretty above board, and we never really think of it as meddling. It's SOP when you're an international player with a stake in the outcome. The problem is that the people and parties we back are not always (or often) the champions of freedom, justice and democracy among their own people. The candidate with those values is usually considered a leftist and is marginalized - ironically - by the United States.  The average citizen in other countries tends to be far more knowledgeable about what America is doing in our name than we are. Sometimes we are the good guys and need to celebrate that.  Other times we are the very thing America isn't supposed to be. 

 

It's not a fun conversation. I get that. Maybe it's a distraction in this particular topic. But we generally want to define the Good Guy and the Bad Guy in each issue, and I think that ends up being part of the problem. 

[Moiraine]

29 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

It's not a fun conversation. I get that.

 

 

Nothing to do with my reply. We've had topics about ugly stuff the U.S. has done. It's still a non factor in how angry and vocal we should be about someone doing it to us.

Edited March 25, 2018 by Moiraine